LONG BEACH – The City Council’s fight over what Mayor Bob Foster has called the “table scraps” of the city’s limited street- repair funding isn’t over yet.

More than a month after the council entered a heated debate about how to distribute street funds and made a 5-3 vote that left Councilwoman Rae Gabelich of the 8thDistrict feeling like she was getting the short end of the stick, the issue is returning to the council Tuesday.

The council meets at 5 p.m. in City Hall, 333 W. Ocean Blvd.

Councilman Gary DeLong, who is chairman of the Budget Oversight Committee, is asking the council to rescind its Feb. 3 decision and approve an alternate funding option.

“We’re trying to make it more equal, make sure everyone’s needs are met as best as possible,” DeLong said last week. “We don’t want there to be any losers in the deal. It’s one city, and we need to be looking at the needs of all the residents.”

Under the approved allocation plan, each of Long Beach’s nine districts will get an equal total amount for street repairs – $1.8 million – except for the 8th District, which includes part of North Long Beach and Bixby Knolls. The 8th District is to get $2.5 million, but that money only comes from Redevelopment Agency funding and is all targeted at improvement projects along Atlantic Avenue and Long Beach Boulevard.

The arguments of the dissenting voters, Gabelich and council members Tonia Reyes Uranga and Val Lerch, was that redevelopment funding exists to remove blight in some of the city’s poorest areas and is intended for needs separate from regular street repairs.

Furthermore, the plan leaves no money at all for any other street repairs in the 8th District, which incensed Gabelich. The plan gives none of the city’s regular capital improvement program money to the 8th District nor to the 1st District, which also has redevelopment areas, and it gives no Proposition 1B money from the state to the 8th District.

Under DeLong’s new proposal, redevelopment money would be shifted from the 8th District to the 9th District, all of which is in a redevelopment area, while newly available Proposition C funding would help pay for the 8th District’s Atlantic Avenue projects. Every district would get capital improvement money and every district but the 9th District would get Prop. 1B funding.

Most districts would then have a total funding, including redevelopment money, of about $1.8million, while the 1st District would get almost $2.2million and the 8th District would get $3.2million.

The proposal would give the 8th District nonredevelopment money that could be used for other projects in the southern half of the district, which isn’t in a redevelopment area.

Lerch said that after last month’s vote, he had suggested to DeLong that he would be willing to shift about $500,000 of the 9th District street funds to help Gabelich. But DeLong’s new proposal goes beyond that and takes away all of the 9th District Prop. 1B money, he said.

That one-time money was approved by voters, so every part of the city should get some of it, Lerch said.

“Once we’re done with this, there is no more Prop. 1B money,” Lerch said.

Furthermore, moving redevelopment money from one project to another requires approval by the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency Board, Lerch noted.

Budget discussion

Earlier Tuesday, the council’s three-member Budget Oversight Committee will meet at 3p.m. to discuss some major budget recommendations to send to the full council.

Tough decisions are coming the council’s way, as Long Beach is facing a general fund budget deficit that has grown to $19.2million in the current fiscal year. The budget deficit is expected to be $46.5million in the 2010 and 2011 fiscal years.

The committee will get an update on likely forced unpaid furloughs for city employees, and will discuss a plan to equalize council members’ office budgets, which was a contentious issue in last year’s budget discussion.

The panel also may rescind one of its past decisions so it can reconsider the possibility of contracting out traffic signal maintenance work, as well as discuss how to save money by changing the billing system for ambulance services.

Also, a long-term financial strategic plan and a new policy on budgeting oil revenue are on the committee agenda.

Stimulus projects

Speaking of money, Uranga and Gabelich are asking during the regular council meeting Tuesday that the council adopt guiding principles and priorities for the use of funding from the federal government’s stimulus package once the money becomes available.

Long Beach submitted almost $500million in potential projects to be funded by the stimulus package, according to a memo from the council members. Uranga and Gabelich are calling for the council to give priority to projects such as those that “provide a sense of place for residents,” are green and sustainable, improve quality of life, and provide living wages for employees, among others.